I yelled at the cat. That’s when I knew things had gone too far.

It started when I began practicing to sing “Fill the World with Love,” a song from the musical Goodbye Mr. Chips (by Leslie Bricusse). I always get a little choked up when I sing it so I was practicing singing through the tears knowing that the throat lump would no doubt be my companion when I sang it for my Zoom Variety Hour (for folks in the memory loss community and their supporters.) The lump did show up but that is not the point.

The point is why I get so choked up. The song in the musical is sung by an old headmaster when he retires from teaching. It begins:

In the morning of my life, I will look to the sunrise
At a moment in my life when the world is new
And the blessing I shall ask is that God shall grant me
To be brave and strong and true
And to fill the world with love my whole life through.

So far, so good. It reminds me of Girl Scout songs.

Then it is the noontime of the old man’s life when the sky is blue and the blessing that he asks is unchanging: to be brave and strong etc.

I get through that just fine. I was earnest once. And there’s still time.

Finally, in the evening of his life he looks to the sunset at a moment when the night is due

Oh god, the night is due. There’s not that much time left.

The song goes on: the question I shall ask only you can answer, was I brave and strong and true? Did I fill the world with love my whole life through?

My tender conscience (shaped by fire breathing fundamentalist Christians from an early age and fiercely militated against by a swath of sarcasm in my make-up) explodes into maudlin regrets that I could have been kinder. I can always be kinder, especially to people who don’t understand sarcasm and I know who they are. Kindness counts. Kindness adds up.

I sang the song for The Variety Hour, I choked up, I sang through the lump, everyone said it was lovely.

It was a Thursday, the day that the odious Texas senator, Ted Cruz left people in his home state freezing –literally–to death, went to Mexico to be warm, came back after social media indicted him and blamed the trip on his daughters. I spent hours enjoying everyone hating on him. Laura Bassett put up a gif of a bedraggled, matted, wild-eyed, unhappy looking cat with the statement “When you look up from your computer and realize you just wasted three hours of your life tweeting about Ted Cruz on vacation.” That was the only laugh I had in four days.

Then I felt weighed down by all the hate. And the time wasted hating and glorying in the hating (as fun as it was.) “Did I fill the world with love?” ran through my head and I started to cry. I cried all the rest of Thursday, a good part of Friday and spent Saturday in a stupor doing nothing.

Earlier in an overabundance of kindness, two people had sent me microphones (I burst into tears, god, I’m a mess). Big, impressive looking microphones. Cadillac, Veuve Cliquot microphones. I flatter myself that it’s because they want to hear my high notes when I sing for The Variety Hour or Open Mike with Mute Button. Whatever.

But I started messing around with the microphones, seeing where they needed to be relative to me and the piano. Then I got the bright idea of recording the accompaniment of “Fill the World with Love” to sing while forcing myself to make love to the camera. My front room became a tangle of cords to speakers, microphones, computer, camera. The first take was depressing: eyes darting all over the place like I making a drug deal and oh god, is that spit visible in my mouth?

The accompaniment didn’t breathe like a singer. I recorded it again. Actually, I attempted it a dozen times before I got something marginally better than the first one.

It was somewhere in there that I yelled at the cat.

I was at the piano, preparing to start another take when she came over, sat at my feet and stared up at me. Stared. If you’ve ever had a cat stare you down, you’ll know what I am talking about. It’s the stare of a million martyrs over the course of history. The eyes bore into you and cause guilt bombs to detonate in your brain. The cat eyes say, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING SOMETHING FOR ME AND I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU ARE JUST SITTING THERE. All this happens when you aren’t even directly looking at the cat. You just know she’s there and you know what she’s doing. It’s asking too much to be filling the world with love at the same time.

I yelled “WHAT!*#?

The Throat Lump cameth. I started to cry. AGAIN. I hate the cords, I hate the look of electronics. I am being strangled with them. Making music is, to me, a piano with a few music books atop it and me sitting there, singing my heart out. I want to fill the world with love, goddamit.

Instead. Well, it’s ironic.